


Shattered Glass and Sandstorms

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Everyone is evil, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, First Order AU, Rey kills some folks, first order rey, the one where the First Order comes to collect Rey as a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-11 00:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7017172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In one world, Rey is lost on Jakku until she is accosted by, in no particular order, a runaway Stormtrooper, an astromech droid, a garbage spaceship, and a destiny.</p>
<p>That is not this world.</p>
<p>In this world, Rey is collected from Jakku young, by a man in a mask and black robes.  </p>
<p>The galaxy should tremble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shattered Glass and Sandstorms

**Author's Note:**

> AKA, the one where Rey is everything Kylo Ren wishes he could be.
> 
> So I found [this photoset](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/post/144881934450/greyjoyss-first-orderrey-i-think-i-can) on Tumblr and I needed that in my life and it wasn't available anywhere. Therefore, this story is the wildly unedited fruit of about two and a half days of obsessive writing. I'm not to be trusted with sunshine-y characters, because I really enjoy dragging them down into darkness.

She isn’t a Skywalker—or maybe she is.  She can’t remember, so does it matter?  She is herself.

Her mothers scream when she’s born.  Her human mother screams in effort and pain.  The other screams in ecstasy, and somewhere in the galaxy the last Jedi’s flesh-and-blood hand shakes as the Force writhes with the birth of a new sun.  To the eyes of the minimally Force-sensitive nurse, the baby girl is wreathed in starlight, her wide and tearless eyes wandering over things unseen.

***

She is four when she is abandoned on Jakku.  She does not remember anything of her life before she stood on the sand and screamed her throat bloody.  The sandstorms last three days and kill half a dozen scavengers as she rages at Unkar Plutt.  She doesn’t know why she is so angry, she only knows that she is. 

She learns to scavenge, learns what parts of the fallen ships are the most valuable, learns how to defend what’s hers. 

She is eight when she kills for the first time, a scavenger who tries to take a whole day’s haul from her, with a long staff she crafted for herself just days previously.  She shatters their jaw with one reckless swing, their skull with a second.  The kill is clean, efficient, and she stares at the body for a long second before stumbling away and being sick.  It is not the last time she kills someone.  It _is_ the last time she’s sick over it.

***

She is twelve when a whole new problem arises, and she is offered five whole portions to let a smuggler tumble her.  She says no, and he tries to force the point.

The Force _howls_.

Rey throws out her hand and the smuggler flies off of her, crashing into the wall of a ship.  He reels to his feet and she reaches out again, on instinct.  His neck contorts as she clenches her fist, his mouth gasping, and finally there is a snap as his spine breaks and she drops him.  Breathing hard, she stares at the scavengers standing around her, daring them to come for her, and they shy back as if she is a monster of legend. 

The Force coils around her and croons, a feral mother wolf guarding its young, and she never quite manages to stop using it.  Scavenged bits fly into her hands, and broken tech whispers the secrets to repairs, and when she finds a flight simulator, she is _gifted_.  An ancient soldier, a clone, passes through the outpost once, and sees her, and asks if she knew his old commander.  When Rey says no, he looks distantly disappointed, and waves it away on the excuse that something about her reminded him of the man.

The smuggler is only months dead when the ships of the First Order, shining and clean, descend from the sky.  A figure cloaked all in black sweeps from the center ship, one with sharp upswept wings.  He could be her cousin.  He could be her brother.  He could be no one at all.  She doesn’t remember her past and doesn’t care about his.  Does it matter?  His voice is twisted and flat behind his helmet, and the first thing out of his mouth is, “Where is the Force user?”

Rey doesn’t move, but the others do.  They scuttle away from the man in the mask, away from her, until there’s a clear alley from him to her, and she is left standing there with her staff in one hand and the Force curling around the other.  Just in case.

“You’re just a _child_ ,” the man says, and the sneer is obvious even through the mask. 

“Maybe where you’re from,” Rey says, and makes her voice as cold as ice.  She really wishes she were a bit taller, another handspan or so.  “What do you want with me?”

“I am Kylo Ren.  My master sent me to collect you.”

“I don’t care to be collected,” she says.

“That doesn’t matter,” Ren said, and waved forward the white-armored Stormtroopers beside him.  “Bring her.”

They advance.

Rey lashes out, staff in one hand, Force in the other.

They fall.

“Why are you fighting me?” Ren snarls, storming forward in a swirl of black.  “We can teach you, protect you, _feed_ you.”

“My family is coming back for me,” Rey says, stubborn.  “They are.”

He reaches her and says quietly, “Would you even know them if you saw them?”

She stares at the mirrored plate of plasglass over his eyes, frozen for a moment, and slams her palm into his chest, hurling him to the ground with a burst of power.  He lunges to his feet, whipping out a hilt that sprouts a crackling red blade and crossguard.

Rey’s damn well not going to die here at the end of a weapon she can’t even name.  She fights.

“Scavenger,” he spits as she dives out of the way of crushing downward sweep. 

She rolls and comes up on her feet, whipping her staff out toward his knee, and _reaches_ with something she can’t explain and breathes, “Runaway.”

He stops, the blind mask turned toward her again, and slashes.

“Smuggler’s son,” she says, darting out of the way.  She’s talking at random now, letting the words rise out of nowhere and trying to force him to make a mistake.  “You killed children because they couldn’t fight back.”  She skids on the sand and lands crouched, fingers of one hand pressed to the ground.  “You will _never_ be as powerful as Darth Vader,” she pants, seeing a flash of a mangled helmet attached to the foreign name.

Ren snarls again, a dark sound through the vocoder.  He makes an unfamiliar gesture with his hand, and Rey is trapped, her muscles frozen.  Another gesture, and the world falls black.

***

She wakes up on a metal table.  She doesn’t appear to be injured.  Her staff is leaned against a wall.  She isn’t thirsty, isn’t hungry, isn’t restrained.  There is nothing else in the room save a holoprojector port set in a wall.  It switches on when she sits up.

 _“Child_ ,” says the face that appears on the holo, crisp and clear.  She almost wishes it wasn’t—the speaker is terrifying, mangled and scarred, papery skin warped over brittle bones.  _“You almost bested my student.”_

“He’s sloppy,” she says.  “Underestimates his opponents when they’re skinny kids.  Who are you?  What do you want?”

 _“I am Supreme Leader Snoke_ ,” the face says.  _“You may call me Master.  I want to teach you, to make you stronger, so that no one will ever hurt you again.”_

Rey just _bets_ that she could call him Master.  It makes something inside her rage, as if she had once been one of the slaves that sometimes passed through Jakku.  She picks the rage up, observes it like a crystal, and files it away, for future use.  “Teach me how?”

 _“Teach you the ways of the Force_ ,” Snoke says.  He eyes her for a moment.  _“You have great potential, little scavenger girl, and no one at all in the galaxy who cared to see it flourish.”_   Rey bares her teeth, tasting blood from an old gash on the inside of her lip, and Snoke says carefully, _“I could make you powerful enough that no one could abandon you again_.”

His words hit her like a sandstorm, scraping her raw and dragging the air from her lungs.

“What would I owe you?”

 _“Nothing_.”

“That’s a lie,” she says instantly.  “Nothing is free.”

Snoke gives her another look.  This one is, she thinks, admiring.  _“You will owe me allegiance.  No one else has a claim on it.”_

Rey considers, legs crossed and wrists resting lightly on them.  “Will you let me go back to Jakku if my family comes back for me?”

 _“Of course_.”

She holds out her hand and her staff flies into it.  She bares her teeth again, in a fierce smile, feeling the clear cold note of the Force ring through her like wind through a dead battleship, like the keen of a sandstorm, and she swallows it whole.  Her Jakku sands drift within her like a dream.  “When do we start, Master?”  _One_ , she tells herself.

***

Word goes out, through the First Order.  Gossip travels like lightning through an army.  Twelve billion Stormtroopers share knowledge like a hive.  No one Trooper knows something without sharing it with their squad, without their squad mentioning it on shift change, without their battalion passing on the knowledge over comms.  The higher ups have their own chains of scuttlebutt, administrators muttering to each other in the mess, officers trading stories over drinks, all the way up the line.

Snoke has a new apprentice, a shattered-glass-girl, a sand-orphan from the back of beyond, with a toothy smile and a staff, they say. 

Snoke has a new apprentice, and she is strong in the Force, they say. 

She’ll be another Kylo Ren, destroying equipment and killing without reason, a rabid rathtar set loose on the galaxy, they say.

The murmurs even reach Snoke’s new apprentice, Force-enhanced senses spiraling out as she meditates, and she hides a thin blade of a smile in her heart, buried in drifting sands.

They are wrong.

Rey is not another Kylo Ren, to wear her destruction and her fragility on her sleeve.

She is worse.

***

Rey gets two kyber crystals when she is fifteen, and they sing a perfect duet, exactly one fifth apart, shining red.  Kylo Ren’s bitter anger rattles through the _Finalizer_ like a punch to the gut, the wavering note of his cracked crystal a counterpoint, and she smiles with all her teeth and assembles a new staff.  When she stands up and raises it to spar, a crisp red blade emerges from either end, one longer and singing high, the other shorter and singing low.

 _“It is…not traditional_ ,” Snoke says when she shows him her new weapon.  _“But if you insist.”_

“Thank you, Master,” she says, forcing her spine into a shallow bow _.  One hundred and_ n _inety-three_ , she tells herself.

He attempts to make her join the Knights of Ren, tempts her with a new name and a reputation to fear.

“I prefer to work alone, Master,” she says— _two hundred_ —and after two weeks of attempting to change her mind, he gives up.  Gracefully, and in such a way that everyone believes that he has chosen to use his second apprentice differently.  Rey knows that she has won a round, and hoards the victory close, piles it up with the hatred of _Master_ and the feel of stealing Kylo Ren’s secrets, lets the sand inside her blow over it.

“I think I will keep my name, Master,” she says— _two hundred and seventeen_.  This, too, is a victory.  She finds that she likes being addressed as _Lady Rey_ , but hates to be called _Mistress_ , and is whiplash quick to enforce it.  Lady Rey dresses in black, as she is expected to, and a hood that frames her face in inky black, but refuses to wear a mask, and insists on wearing clothes that allow her to move freely, not the heavy robes that Kylo Ren prefers.

She walks silently, her lightstaff strapped across her back, her black-gloved hands quick and deft, and Kylo Ren hates her.

***

At fifteen, Lady Rey is given a ship of her own, moves off of the _Finalizer_.  Her ship is smaller, not a flagship, named the _Ruthless_.  She is Snoke’s sword hand, silver staff strapped to her back, small black-gloves hands flecked with blood. 

She gains a reputation in the First Order.  Clever and direct, demanding, pragmatic to the bone, but not irrational or prone to outbursts.  Troopers whisper among themselves that if she says ‘jump’ and you ask ‘how high,’ she’ll execute you for inefficiency, but if you keep your head down and learn to know the answer before she asks the question, she’ll treat you well.  The _Ruthless_ does not often have to go in for repairs, and never for damage done by its Lady.  There are whispers that she even does enhancements and repairs herself.  The captain of the _Finalizer_ is bitterly envious as he looks at the newest destroyed panel, at the latest non-com officer in need of medical care, at the latest effective but unlucky Stormtrooper caught in the crossfire.

“Master, I wish to have a personal guard,” she announces the next time she communicates with Snoke— _three hundred and nine—_ because she has been watching, in her time in the First Order.  A knife is always waiting to slip into the ribs of those in power.  She is not yet confident in her ability to inspire perfect compliance through fear, so she will need a small core of loyal soldiers.  A personal guard is a good start.  He agrees, and she contacts the newly appointed Stormtrooper Captain, Phasma.  Lady Rey has criteria, and Phasma, already weary of dealing with Kylo Ren’s treatment of her Troopers, expects those criteria to be ‘talented but disposable.’

Her criteria are as follows.  They need to be young, within a few years of Rey’s own age.  They need to be the best of the best, the most skilled soldiers Phasma can offer.  They need to be outsiders, not closely held in their squads.  They need to be trustworthy and reliable, but not up for promotion.  It would be ideal if the reason they were not up for promotion was that they cared excessively about their squad.

Phasma stares when she hears that, but nods slowly and agrees.

The _Ruthless_ returns to the _Finalizer_ a galactic standard week later and two dozen Stormtroopers are waiting, lined up in four perfect rows of six.

“Take off your helmets,” Rey orders.  Of them, half jump to do as she says, and the other half look to Phasma for confirmation.  “Everyone who took my orders without checking with your current commanding officer, you have been disqualified.  You may go.”  Phasma nods, and thirteen Stormtroopers file out of the room.  “Everyone else, helmets off.”  Phasma nods again, and they remove their helmets.  Rey prowls the lines slowly, studying the faces of each Trooper.  Most are staring straight ahead.  Only one meets her eyes, one of the oldest present, a young male with black eyes and a broad nose, warm dark skin and cropped hair.  “What is your number, Trooper?  Why are you here?”

“FN-2187, Lady Rey,” he reports at once.  “I am here because I am a match for all of your criteria.”

“Elaborate, FN-2187.”

“I am nineteen cycles old,” he says crisply.  “I am the best marksman in my squadron, as well as having top marks in hand to hand combat and tactics.  I am considered an ideal Stormtrooper.  As a result, I am not close with the other members of my squad.”

“If you’re the ideal Stormtrooper, why are you not up for promotion?”

He looks away from her for the first time.  “I have been turned down for promotion three times based on the fact that I am known to prioritize saving my squad over my own success.”

Rey nods and asks, “And are you afraid of me, FN-2187?”

He looks back down at her and pauses for a long moment.  “Yes, Lady Rey, I am.  I do not know who you are or what you can do.”

“You’re honest, too,” she muses.  She turns to Phasma and taps FN-2187 on the chest.  “I would like him to be the captain of my personal guard, effective immediately.”

“As you wish, Lady Rey,” Phasma says.  “I will complete the requisite forms.”

FN-2187 moves to replace his helmet and Rey holds up a hand.  “Leave the helmet off for the moment.”  He does.

She ends up with four guards, in addition to FN-2187.  Two women, KR-3529 and LB-4848, and two men, VR-8576 and TK-9734.  All of them are recognized as supremely talented, all of them are outsiders, and all but FN-2187 are within two years older than Rey.

Their squads hold memorials in private, confident that they’ve been sent to their deaths.

The _Ruthless_ takes off with its five new passengers and, once they are safely into hyperspace, Lady Rey sheds her cloak and stands in front of her new guard, in nothing but her fitted black garments and a considering expression.  They are securely locked into her private quarters, and they are all standing very straight.

“I think I’ll be designing specialized armor for you,” she says after a moment.  “Something more maneuverable.  Also something more recognizable.  You’re not just Stormtroopers anymore.”  She raises her eyebrows at them and smiles.  It might be the first time she has genuinely smiled in years.  “At ease, soldiers.” 

Slowly, their shoulders ease.  FN-2187 is the first to ask, “What are our duties, Lady Rey?”

“You are my personal guard,” Rey says.  “Your duty is to protect me on ground missions and from internal plots against me.  Other than that, you are free to develop interests in any function of the ship you prefer.  I do not require you to address me formally in private, although in public you should probably call me Lady Rey.  I will not harm you for questioning my decisions, although I would prefer that you do it in private.  Effective immediately, FN-2187 is your only superior officer other than myself, and our orders take precedence over any others issued to you.  Also,” she says, tapping a gloved finger against her lips consideringly.  “You had better choose names.  I am willing to help with that, if you like.”

Dead silence follows this announcement.  It’s FN-2187 who breaks it again.  “Names, Lady Rey?”

“You can call me Rey,” she says.  “And yes.  You’re more than pawns now.  Consider the names part of the promotion.  Do you need help choosing them?”

“Yes,” FN-2187 says faintly, and the four other Stormtroopers nod emphatically, as if she had just asked that they learn to fly without a ship.

“All right,” Rey says, and walks to the end of the line, to VR-8576.  “You.  VR, VR, let’s see.  Short names, do you think?  Yes?  What about Vore, is that satisfactory?”

“Yes, Lady Rey,” Vore says, his voice slow and bemused.

“Yes, excellent,” she says, moving on down the line.  TK-9734 becomes Tik, KR-3529 and LB-4848 become Kyre and Loba respectively, and then she is standing in front of FN-2187 again.  Rey reaches out and dusts a small smudge from the shoulder of his armor, considering him.  “And you.  My new captain.  FN.  I used to know a Finn.”  Finn was the name of the first man Rey killed.  The first man whose name she knew, at least.  She always liked the name.

“Finn,” he says, turning it over in his mouth, slowly, thoughtfully.  “I like it.”

“Good,” she says, and it is done.

***

Lady Rey, the dagger of the First Order, is sixteen when they acquire the pilots. 

Some things have made themselves clear since the formation of her personal guard.  At first, the five Troopers are dryly called Rey’s Fist.  She closes down the joke with prejudice, a sneer twisting her lips at the memory of Kylo Ren, so desperate to be his grandfather (he hears the nickname, and he rages through the _Finalizer_ like a hurricane).  Instead, her five protectors are called the Armor, and they operate like a smoothly oiled machine, as much a weapon in her hand as her lightstaff.  And Rey is nothing if not a superlative combatant.  Only one of the Armor has been replaced, after Tik died saving Rey from a blaster shot.  His replacement, requisitioned from Phasma, was speechless with the honor of her promotion, and admitted shyly that being part of the Armor was something that Stormtroopers held up as the best position available.  Dangerous, but privileged, and with the luxury of serving under Rey on the _Ruthless._

Flanked by five devoted figures in sleek black body armor, Rey cuts an imposing figure, even before the growth spurt that she hits near her birthday.  Afterward, she is almost of a height with the Troopers, and in her usual hood and gloves, she looks very much the heir to the Dark Side.

She meets Kylo Ren once every few months, and he hates her, and she has decided that he is beneath her concern.  Snoke encourages competition, and Rey knows that the best way to win a match is to declare victory at the outset.

The pilots are Republic.  There are twelve in the squad, five of them are captured with all their gear by the _Ruthless_ when they run afoul of her forces.  Rey claims the right of interrogation, and her crew doesn’t question her.

She lets herself into the cell with the leader of the squad, a male human with a face that should be carved in marble for posterity, even scowling.  He is securely bound to a chair, hands cuffed to the arms, and Rey stands before him, head cocked, and examines him closely.  He glares at her, and she ignores it.  She can sense, at the ragged edge of his exhausted mind, that he knows a few rumors about the Force users in the First Order.

“What is your name?” she asks at last, and he looks startled, the scowl lightening in surprise.

“My name?”  She nods, and he pauses for a long moment before he says, “My name is Commander Poe Dameron.  I’m a pilot for the Republic.”  His glare twists into something else, something wry and angry, and he asks, “And what about you?”

“I am Lady Rey,” she says.  “I am in command of this ship.”

“Lady Rey,” he muttered.  “I thought Lady Rey was a Sith.”

“Rumor is unreliable,” she says flatly.  “Why was your squadron in our space?”

“Didn’t see any signs, m’lady,” he shoots back, and she raises her eyebrows.

“The Republic knows that this is First Order space,” she says, and frowns minutely.  “Unless…you weren’t told that.”  He presses his lips together and Rey gives a short bark of a laugh.  “The noble Republic, in all its humanitarian glory.  Well, Commander Poe Dameron, I’ll leave you to consider that for the night.”

“What?” he asks, looking blindsided.

“Were you expecting torture?  Or to have your mind ransacked by a monster from the Dark Side of the Force?” she asks carelessly, making a tiny adjustment to her glove.  “If you had information, or I had orders, this might be a different conversation.  As it is, I’ll send one of my personal guard with a meal later today.  Captain Finn,” she calls, raising her voice, and he appears at the door instantly.  “Uncuff the commander, and assign Vore to ensure that the pilots are fed and given water.  Commander.”  She gives Commander Dameron a wry nod on her way out the door, and hears the quiet rattle of Finn uncuffing him.

“Why do you work for her?” she hears Dameron ask, half-disgusted, half honestly baffled.

“The Lady Rey is the best person I’ve ever known,” Finn says.

“She’s a murderer.”

There’s a brief pause.  “So am I.”  Another.  “So are you, I expect.  I’ll send Vore in a while.  I recommend against trying to escape.  The Lady treats cooperative prisoners well.”

The prisoners are kept for weeks.  Of the five, two attempt escape and die in the process, more through their own idiocy than any intervention on the part of the crew of the _Ruthless_.  The other prisoners are informed of this and seem overall unsurprised.

It comes to light that Commander Poe Dameron and a handful of his squadron have been considering defection from the Republic for some time.  This is not the first time that a lie has resulted in death.  Rey considers this carefully, watches the holo footage of the fight that led to their capture, notes the skill of the pilots, and plans a campaign.

The crew of the _Ruthless_ begins to wander past the cells and talk to the prisoners.  They talk about their assignment to the Lady Rey, their previous work, their perspective on how she runs her ship.  The Armor visits, whoever is off shift dropping by to tell stories of life as one of the rank and file—and, when it’s Finn, of life on _Finalizer_ , under the eye of Kylo Ren.  Rey takes note of the few astromech droids they were able to capture, has a few brief conversations with them.  Two are resistant and, furthermore, rigged to be able to comm back to base.  They are dismantled.  One, which identifies itself at Commander Dameron’s astromech, becomes oddly attached to Rey once she repairs its broken antenna and damaged optical wiring.  She waits until she is confident that it has a good opinion of her, and returns it to its master. 

Snoke does not encourage close bonds, but at her core Rey is still the girl who survived Jakku by the skin of her teeth and her wits, and she knows the value of loyalty.

In six galactic weeks, Rey has three new pilots appointed to her ship, and discovers that, as pilots go, Poe Dameron can give even her a run for her money.  She promotes him to Commander, again, and puts him in charge of her fighters.  He learns to smile at her, a full and dazzling thing given only to herself and Finn.

She does not tell Snoke about the recruitment, and carefully hides the information away, buries it with drifting Jakku sand, along with the crystal rage and razor smiles and _Master_.

***

Rey is seventeen when the _Ruthless_ rejoins the _Finalizer_ and they fly together to Snoke’s base, where Rey and Kylo Ren take shuttles planetside for training.  This is only the latest in a series of such visits.

It’s called training, but Rey remembers watching two feral nisk on Jakku rip each other apart for approval from the pack master, and she knows what this is.  Her crew has an idea, too, and they are tense and anxious while she is off the ship.  On the _Finalizer_ , it is as if a dark cloud has lifted, everyone easier with their resident hurricane off board.

Rey and Kylo Ren meet planetside and give each other cool nods, but do not speak.  They spend a week fasting and meditating, which Rey is quite good at.  She sits in silence, legs folded comfortably and her gloves hands loose on her knees, and listens with her eyes closed while Snoke demands that Kylo _focus_.  She lets her Jakku sands whip through her, scraping her veins clean and raw, and listens to Kylo struggle to control the Force like a shuttle with a stuck yoke, listens to him plead with _Master_ to help him, listens to Snoke push him harder.

As they usually do, they spar.  Rey has the advantage of reach, with her staff, and of cool calculation, where Kylo often loses his temper and slashes with his lightsaber like he’s wielding a heavy sword.  He has the advantage of size and of formal Jedi training, although she neither knows nor particularly cares where he acquired it.

They spar once every day of their training, six times.  She wins three, and the other three are fought to a stalemate, both of them panting with exhaustion on the stone combat floor in front of Snoke. 

The last day, during their seventh match, Kylo Ren forces her to the ground, his wild red lightsaber a handspan from her throat, and she coolly says, “I yield.”

He doesn’t back away, panting, the ragged edge of the lightsaber crackling closer with each breath.  “Little scavenger girl,” he whispers.  “I should have killed you on Jakku.”

“But you didn’t,” she says, and when she swallows in a calculated show of weakness, she feels the energy of the ‘saber a hairsbreadth from her throat.  She focuses on the push and pull of sand inside her and watches Kylo with care.

 _“Release her, Kylo_ ,” Snoke orders, and he begins to rock back, slowly.  Rey’s Jakku sands swirl faster, a sandstorm building in her lungs, and she flexes her fingers.  Blue-white lightning rages from her fingertips and, for a moment, Kylo’s eyes throw back the light, their dark brown flaring like a creature bred for the dark.  Then he is gone, hurled away by the lightning and convulsing under the electricity.

Rey stands, releasing the lightning, and looks down at him, at the flames beginning to lick up the edges of his robes.

Kylo Ren was a tall man, towering over Rey’s smaller form.  He looks strangely small, in death.  Across the galaxy, a woman with a crown of braids gasps and crumples into a chair.  She may be Rey’s aunt.  She may be Rey’s mother.  She may be no one at all.  Rey does not remember, and she does not care.  It does not matter.

 _“Where did you learn to wield Force lightning, apprentice?_ ” Snoke asks, an odd note in his voice, and Rey looks up, schooling her face into one of apology.

“I don’t know, Master,” she says, she lies, lowering herself to one knee— _five hundred and seventy_.  “I just…I was afraid that he would kill me and I opened myself to the Force and it just happened.  Forgive me, Master.”  _Five hundred and seventy-one._

 _“Interesting_ ,” Snoke says, that odd note still in his voice.  _“You are as strong in the Force as I believed.”_   He pauses for a long moment.  _“Our training is concluded for now.  You may return to your ship.  Inform the_ Finalizer _that their Lord is dead.”_

“Yes, Master,” she says, rising— _five hundred and seventy-two_ —and raising her hood.  She turns her back on Snoke and walks toward the door, strapping her staff to her back.

She waits until she is behind the controls of her shuttle to allow the dagger-sharp smile onto her lips.

***

The crew of the _Finalizer_ is silent when the shuttle docks and the wrong Force user steps out.  Lady Rey walks onto the bridge and commandeers the ship-wide intercom with an unnervingly polite request.  General Hux, used to Kylo Ren’s brutal version of interpersonal relations, is too shocked to resist.

The announcement of Kylo Ren’s death is crisp, detached, and utterly lacking in details.  By the time the ship shakes itself out of its stunned stupor, Lady Rey is gone.

Whispers spread almost at once, and they spread like wildfire.  Stormtroopers whisper the numbers of those caught during one of Kylo Ren’s rages.  Officers remember coworkers and friends murdered by an errant blow of a lightsaber, and the unending work left in his wake. 

Phasma looks at the reports from the _Ruthless_ , each one a neat report of how one of her Troopers died honorably in the line of duty, sent in promptly and meticulously with Lady Rey’s thumbprint marking the seal.  She compares it with those sent in by the _Finalizer_ , haphazardly scribbled stories of murders and accidents and missions noted down by whoever thought to do so.

Rumors always spread.  There is always a core of truth.

The truth that spreads from the _Finalizer_ is that Kylo Ren is dead.  The reverent rumor wound around the truth is that Lady Rey killed him.

***

Rey is nineteen now.  She is as close to a fully trained Sith as exists, these days, between the teachings from Snoke and the private research she has done and hidden.  The crew of the _Ruthless_ doesn’t particularly care what she’s trained as, these days, they continue to seal themselves to her with blood and adoration.  The _Ruthless_ travels with two sister ships, these days, the _Valor_ and the _Triumph_ , one on each flank.  Commander Poe Dameron has turned down three promotions out of the pilot’s seat and tripled the size of his fighter fleet, these days.  Captain Finn of the Armor is the only surviving member of the original five, these days, the others having died in the line of duty and been replaced, and as ever-present at Rey’s right hand as he was when she recruited him.

She is welcomed with open arms on any First Order ship or world, treated with the honor and respect that Kylo Ren dreamed of, once.  Lady Rey, the officers say, is everything the First Order should be, efficient and reasonable and stern, but not needlessly cruel; clever and quick-witted and ruthless, but not wild with power.  Twelve billion Stormtroopers speak her name with something like awe, talk about the Armor in tones of wonder.  Even the general of the First Order, cold and ambitious, has nothing but good things to say about her.

Rey is a shattered-glass-girl, a sand-orphan from the back of beyond.  That does not mean that she does not know how to arrange a coup.

She is at Snoke’s base again, sweeping through lightsaber katas and feeling her Jakku sands scrape her empty.  Her eyes are closed.  Snoke is at ease, she can feel it.

Every once in a while, since the death of Kylo Ren, _Master_ has been uncomfortable around her, almost afraid.  She has gotten very good at hiding a smile.

And down, and sweep, and up, and jab, and down.  Her staff’s red blade grazes just above the stone as she turns her back to Snoke and takes a deep breath, crouching down and pulling the Force close around her.  When she turns back to  him, it explodes, and she flies lightly through the air, coming down lightsaber-first on her teacher’s chest.  The long blade at the end of her staff sinks into his throat and she twists.

His lips form her name.

“What, Master?” she whispers— _one thousand_.  “Did you expect to survive this?”  She drags the lightsaber down, toward his thin and brittle chest.  “Beg for your life,” she suggests dispassionately.  “If you ask me to live as many times as I’ve called you Master, I might decide to let you.  You only have one thousand to go.”

He dies.  She waits for a moment, decides to exercise caution, and cuts off his head.

Rey raises her hood, eyes gleaming brilliant gold in the dim light of Snoke’s home, and turns her hungry gaze out toward the galaxy.

The Jakku sands rage in her chest, and she leaves her teacher’s home, considering the merits of _Empress_.

**Author's Note:**

> It is 110% my opinion that Rey has accidentally turned herself into a Sith Lord by killing her teacher, and furthermore she and Finn and Poe go out and conquer the galaxy together. Also, now that Rey isn't answerable to anyone, she definitely goes out and informs the pair of them that, in case they were curious, the three of them are now an item (evil threesome, yes or yes?). I wish to hell that I had artistic talent because I _REALLY ___want to draw the three of them in their First Order gear. This has been my ramble, thank you for reading, come talk to me on Tumblr at[words-writ-in-starlight](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/).


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